It’s the most wonderful time of the year: the 2017 Sexiest Man Alive will be revealed on Tuesday, Nov. 14! Ahead of the big day, we’re counting down with a handful of hot Hollywood stars who earned spots in the pages of the issue.

Sexiest Husband Kumail Nanjiani, 39, saw his star rise this year with the debut of his film The Big Sick, based on the true story of his relationship with now-wife Emily V. Gordon. But it’s not just her devotion to her — he proposed shortly after she awoke from a medically induced coma just months into their courtship — that makes him sexy, it’s his humor, too.

A tech guy on Silicon Valley, “I did have a tech job for real,” he tells PEOPLE. “For five years in Chicago. I was very bad at it.

“For me, the sexiest part about being a tech guy was leaving the job and not being a tech guy anymore. Even porns don’t have tech guy scenarios: it’s always pizza guys and plumbers. Those are sexy professions. A tech guy would just show up, say, ‘Did you try restarting it?’ and leave before anything really exciting happened. Nobody wants to see that.”